Existing diagnostic imaging techniques of breast cancer include X-ray mammography, computer tomography (CT), ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and nuclear imaging. FIG. 1 illustrates a table summarizing the advantages and disadvantages of each existing diagnostic imaging process or technique. These conventional techniques may be limited by poor resolution, use of harmful ionizing radiation, lack of portability, and/or expensive instrumentation.
Near-infrared (NIR) optical imaging is an emerging non-invasive technology that may be applied towards deep tissue imaging, with one application being breast cancer diagnostics However, the existing NIR optical imaging systems may be limited in a number of ways. For example, existing NIR imaging apparatus may be large and bulky systems, and thus, not generally portable. NIR imaging apparatus may also cause patient discomfort because the apparatus may require a patient to be placed in certain positions or may require compression of patient breast tissue. Moreover, conventional NIR imaging apparatus and methods may be limited to imaging only fixed volumes or certain shapes of breast tissue.
In recent years, hand-held based optical imaging systems have been developed for clinical applications of the imaging technology. These hand-held based systems represent an alternative to the conventional bulky optical imaging systems. However, the hand-held optical imagers available may be limited by having only flat measuring probe heads that cannot conform to different tissue curvatures and/or may not be capable of performing three-dimensional (3-D) tomography studies. In addition, all these optical imagers typically employ single point illumination (e.g., using only a single existing light source or multiple existing light sources in which only a single source is activated at one time) and single/multiple point detection measurement geometries that limit the total data acquisition rates in a clinical environment. Because of the relatively slow data capture rates, patient discomfort and wait time may be further increased.